Overwhelmed at Home and in Business? Lisa Woodruff on Escaping Quicksand

 Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365, joins Small Business Pivots to talk about the hidden mental load that overwhelms so many business owners at home and at work. If you feel like household chaos is draining your focus, time, and energy, this episode will help you think differently about systems, organization, and getting out of reactive mode. 

Overwhelmed at Home and in Business? Lisa Woodruff on Escaping Quicksand

If you are a business owner who feels like your company is hard enough — and then you go home to more decisions, more clutter, more logistics, and more invisible work — this episode will hit home.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison talks with Lisa Woodruff, founder and CEO of Organize 365, about the real mental and emotional weight of running a household while also trying to build a business or career. Lisa shares how chaos in the home can spill into work, why so many women hit a point of overload in their late 30s and 40s, and how systems at home can create the same kind of clarity and momentum that systems create in business.

Lisa started Organize 365 as a blog, grew it into an in-home professional organization company, then pivoted into podcasting, courses, books, and a broader productivity brand. Today, Organize 365 offers planning tools, courses, and practical systems designed to help people reduce overwhelm and run their homes more intentionally.

Michael and Lisa dig into:

• why home organization is not just about pretty spaces
• how household systems work a lot like business SOPs
• why women often become the default CEO of the household
• how invisible work and cognitive overload build over time
• how planning, batching, and simplifying can reduce decision fatigue
• why “getting organized” often leads to a bigger life transformation than people expect
• how household stability can free up time and energy for business growth

Lisa also talks about her new book, Escaping Quicksand, which Simon & Schuster describes as a psychology-driven guide for women who feel buried by the mental load of modern home life. 

If your business growth keeps colliding with home-life chaos, this episode will help you see that getting organized is not shallow or optional — it can be strategic.

What you’ll learn

• Why business owners can feel overwhelmed at home even when they are strong at work
• How household systems mirror business systems and SOPs
• What “invisible work” really looks like inside a home
• Why cognitive overload builds over time
• How batching and themed days can reduce chaos
• Why organization creates more time than it costs
• What transformation usually happens after someone gets organized
• Why dreaming bigger gets easier when life is less reactive

Transcript

Meet Lisa And Her New Book

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right. Welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have another special guest from around the world. And if you've listened to the podcast before, you know that I know no one can introduce their name and their business like the business owner. So I let you have the floor to do that. Tell us a little bit about you, and we'll get going right after that.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Thanks, Michael. My name is Lisa Woodruff. I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I'm the CEO and founder of Organize 365. I started the company 14 years ago as a blog, quickly became an in-home professional organization company, pivoted to a podcast with online courses, and now I'm finishing up my doctorate, so I'll have a PhD in applied psychology in a few months.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

And you have podcasts, you have books, you have resources. Tell us a little bit about the book that's behind you.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, so my latest book, this will be my sixth book that is coming out on June 23rd, is Escaping Quicksand. And these are the mental mindset shifts I had to make as a female business owner and just generally a woman in my 40s to move from feeling reactive and overwhelmed in my household and business and life to being positive, proactive, and in control.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, I'm looking forward to reading that. I don't know that it really matters the gender, to be honest, because I know as business owners, we all have chaos, as I mentioned earlier, in our business, in our social life, in our family, in our home, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm excited to get started here and really deep dive into where it starts, because I know that your one of your most recent podcast episodes was on depression not too long ago. And so I think sometimes when we have all this chaos, it can lead to depression. So is there kind of a starting place that you'd like to start with?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yes. So I re-aired that podcast episode. That's from about 10 years ago. And the actual depression was probably 15 to 17 years ago. And this is where I find, especially for women, as we get into our late 30s, early 40s, the amount of things that we've said yes to in our first couple decades of adulthood and the complexities of the lives that we've grown in adulthood becomes very heavy. And for a lot of us, it just becomes too much. So for me, um, you know, my 20s were great. I graduated with a teaching degree, ended up adopting our children. I got to be a stay-at-home mom, which is what I always wanted. But the kids' needs were beyond what we could uh financially handle. And they needed different schools and if it needed different medical interventions. My parents ended up getting divorced, which will really rock your world, I'll tell you that. And then my dad got sick and ultimately passed away. So my sister and I had to navigate that while the divorce was going on or had just been finalized. And, you know, selling your family home and uh settling an estate, not living at home anymore was really challenging. We were going through the 2000, 2008, 2009 uh Great Recession. The direct sales company I made money from went bankrupt twice. And I just felt like everything was stacked against me. And so, yeah, I did go on antidepressants for a period of time because I literally couldn't prioritize anymore. Like everything seemed like such a big deal, and a lot of things were a big deal, but not everything was a big deal. And that's how I kind of uh looked at, I didn't see any way out of the chaos that I was in, and I couldn't prioritize what was truly important anymore. Um, and so the the medication really did help me. Really, I didn't care about anything on the medication. My husband was like, the kids were jumping on the couch one night, and he said, You should stop them. And I was like, Aren't they cute? Shouldn't they have fun? Like, this is the way life should be. He's like, No, like who are you? What happened to my wife? Like, I was like, look, I can't care as much about every single thing I was caring about because I wouldn't even be here anymore. Like, I literally needed something to like just level set. Um, I was able to not use that medication anymore because I'm not a typically depressed person. It's not generally in my DNA. It was more situational depression than general depression. And I started to put systems into place to help me get organized again. And I think, you know, in business or at home and both, we need systems and structures. So you're a business coach, so you can help people coach them in business. We don't have that at home. Like there are a lot of different operational systems you can use to run your company. There are zero at home. Zero. That's why, you know, like Dave Ramsey is so popular because it's like a system you can use for your household money. You have like tons of systems you can use for business money. There just aren't a lot of systems for household money. So you're either a Dave Ramsey fan or not a Dave Ramsey fan because he's like the only one that gave you a system. Um, and so that's where I started to realize that I needed systems at home because I was drowning at home and work. And so I started creating the systems at home, and that's where the company came from.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

So how old is the company? 14 years. 14 years. So in that time period, have you seen a shift? We've kind of gone through the economic recession, we've gone through COVID. How challenging is it these days to, once you have a system, to kind of stick to the system? Because the whole world is yelling at us, it seems like.

Your Home Has Real Economic Power

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah. So I think there is a lot of noise, and at home we can get really distracted from running our households. And the more I think about my household as an economic entity in a business, the easier it is for me to actually stick to those systems and really prioritize what needs to get done, like I do as a CEO in business. So the U the American household is 68% of US GDP. So how we spend our money is how the country goes. And so we have a great economic impact in America. And a lot of times people will say, well, the work we do at home is invisible and it is, you know, free. There's no money associated with it. And I don't think that's true. I think whatever you put on your tax return is how much money your family household collectively made and is taxed by the government. That's the size of the economic entity that you are running. So you I was a stay-at-home mom and my husband was working, but collectively, I was making the decisions of how we were going to use those resources once they came into the household. And as we went into COVID and different things like that, um we realized how important home is. Like we all got sent home, right? And, you know, there's literally wars raging all over the world right now. Who knows what the price of oil and gas is going to be tomorrow? Those things are out of our control. But almost everything that happens in our household is in our control, specifically if you are the female head of household. I mean, like, I make most of the buying decisions. My husband's kind of a minimalist, he has very few things. So if there's clutter in the house, it's my fault because I brought it into the house and I didn't move it back out again. So there is a lot that we have in our control. And so when you're feeling out of control and like, oh my goodness, I can't handle the economics or what's going on politically, that is outside of your household. If you turn off that input and start focusing on what you can control in your household, I feel much calmer.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

You mentioned both home and business and systems. Do you find any parallels in there?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yes. So every woman who is working is also running a household. So she is running two businesses. She may be a CEO in her household and an employee in her work. She may be an entrepreneur in both, but it's not running the household is not optional. You can run it subpar and it can make you feel anxious, but the buck stops with you. Now, if you're partnered, you can have a partner that shares in the load, but ultimately one person is usually the CEO. And if there's a female, it is usually the see the female. Not always, but usually it is the female. And I think this is the thing holding women back from, you know, the growth they want to make in their career or in their business is not recognizing and acknowledging the work it takes to run a household. It's significant. It's 20 to 40 hours a week when you really break it down in academia. And so once you realize you have a part-time to full-time job running a household, then you may also be a parent. These are two jobs that you can't outsource and you don't want to outsource. And you do in addition to your entrepreneurial or your W-2 employee job. And also, whenever there's anything that's caretaking needed inside of the extended family, usually that defaults to the closest female that is in proximity. And so they will prioritize the caretaking in the household, even extended household in their work. And that's why women feel like at the end of the day, there's so much to do and they haven't gotten it done because they're literally doing two, maybe three jobs.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Interesting, interesting. So in the household. Where do you think it starts like self-discovery? In other words, is it that we have a mess everywhere or just there's so much going on? I mean, how does one recognize that I need help? Because a lot of us are we don't like to ask for help.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah, I think if we take it, because you're a business coach and people listening are like, Why are we talking about the household? I want like business stuff. So I'm going to take it to my business and then we'll we'll mirror that over in the household. That's how I observe these things. As the CEO, the visionary, the strategic person in my company, when I was a solopreneur, I had to do all the admin. I had to do like if I record a podcast, it was 13 steps to get it uploaded and the blog post and all of that. When I hired my executive assistant, she took on all of the steps except recording the podcast. Now I'm in my zone of genius. I'm doing the recording of the podcast. I try to stay in my business in my strategic visionary role as much as possible because I have a team that can do the details and can make real whatever ideas I have. Then I transition back to the household and there isn't that team there. And I'm like, oh, okay, great. And so what happens in a household is we're used to being strategic and visionary in work. If you're a leader, if you're a CEO, and then you go in the household and there is no staff to direct, and you are the staff. So then you just do the work because you've always done it and you could do it quickly. Now you can share the road load with a spouse if you have one, but you can't share all of the load, just like a CEO in business wouldn't share all of their load with their team. If you can outsource some of the things or just not do some of the things you've always done or share part of the load at home, what is really important is to start to establish systems and become strategic and visionary at home so that you do less, you do things more efficiently, you realize there are seasons at home where you need to do some activities more and some activities less. So, like, for example, if you're gonna be doing a lot of traveling in the summer for work and your kids are gonna be all over the place, what if you just use paper plates all summer long and like you didn't have dishes? Now you don't even have the chore of dishes. Or uh maybe it's winter and you decide, you know, we're just gonna do crock pot meals during the week. I'm gonna batch them all on um set Sunday. And actually, I used to do this, I would make a whole month's worth, and then you freeze them all, and then you just have those Monday through Friday. You don't even have to think about what is dinner. I don't care. Grab any bag out of the freezer and put it in the crock pot. That's what dinner is gonna be tonight. You know, starting to think systematically like you would it at work. Like you would never run your company through what emails come through your email inbox. You would always have a plan, and then those would support your plan. So starting to think that way and then establishing systems at home that will support the work that you're doing. So it's not cognitively decision laden, it's just running the plan, running the plan, just like you do at work.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

So, what happens when you don't have the support at home? In other words, it's similar to business. And for business owners that think this is not relatable, it is because I know business owners, we work with business owners, and your home is just as chaotic as your business. So this is for you.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

What happens at home when you don't have that support and you feel like you're doing it all alone?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So it's just like in work without any support, where every single time you go to do things, it's like you're doing it for the first time. You're making all the decisions again because you don't have a good SOP standard operating procedure, or uh, or you're not batching things, you're doing a little bit of this task and this task and this task instead of saying, this is the laundry day, this is the cleaning day, this is the food prep day, this is the email and finance bill day for your household. Like when you can start to theme your days at home and batch your tasks like you do at work, you can get a lot more done in less time. And you have to plan. So, my big thing is I do a Sunday basket, which is a Sunday planning time at home, where I go through all those administrative and invisible work tasks that I need to do to keep the bills paid and the house running and the and the fridge stocked all at one time. And then I plan out my household work on paper, just like I do at work. So at work, I think through the week and I plan it out all on paper. And I think about like who am I meeting with and how can I be prepared for these meetings? Same thing at home. Like, where are you going? Do you have the gift you need to take? Do you have the directions? Is everybody who's going to that event been notified? Do they have it on their calendar? You can make all those decisions on Sunday. And then Monday through Friday, you just run your plan. So you're focusing on work and all the household things are already scheduled. You have everything you need. I even put everything in my car on Sunday. So, like if I'm, you know, doing Pilates on Wednesday night, my gym bag is already in the car. Why does it need to be in the laundry room? It can live in the trunk of my car as easily as it can live in the laundroom. So I leave right from work, go to Pilates, I've got everything I need.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

How can we support the people that feel like this is a lot more work on their plate? In other words, we hear that from business owners as well. It's like, I really want to do business coaching, but it sounds like there's a lot of work, and I just don't know when I'd have time to do it. And in my head, I'm thinking, yeah, but that's why.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

I can't afford not to do it. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

So how can we support those? Any advice?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

So I think if you're already listening to this podcast, you're a kind of person that wants to do that anyway. You're you just want permission and to know that it's going to work. And I will tell you, it is going to work. It is an investment of time. Whenever you want to set up a system, it's going to take twice as long to set up the system as it is going to be to run the system once you have it running. So let's say, for example, you're a solopreneur and you're like, I really want to hire a VA or an executive assistant. It is going to take three to four times as long for you to do every single task that you outsource to that VA or executive assistant first. But then once they are trained, you never have to do that task again. So when I trained my executive assistant to do the 13 steps that I did in the podcast posting, first I had to figure out what those were because I was doing them. I didn't know what they were. So I had to figure out what they were. Then I had to write them all down. Then I recorded myself doing them so that she had the screen capture of everything that we were going to do. Then we did it alongside each other where I did it and she watched me do it. Then the next week she did it and I watched her do it. Then the week after that, she did it and I checked that she did it right. And it was a fourth or fifth week where she actually did it. I was like, yeah, that looks good. And then I've stopped checking it and I've I haven't checked it for nine years since. So for nine years, I haven't had to do anything related to my podcast. But for that period of time, it probably took me 10 to 20 times as long to do a podcast because I had to do all that. That is what we have to do at home too. There is so much invisible load in what women are doing. They're overloaded by their cognitive overwhelm. But you can't just say to your spouse, don't you see what I'm doing around here? Why can't you help? You have to do it the same way you do at work. Okay, what am I overwhelmed doing? What are the what are the specific things I do in this task? Let's say it is, I don't know, scheduling the kids' uh camp. Like, okay, first thing I do is I go out there and I find all the different camps that are possible for their age group. Then I check it against our calendar. I say, okay, well, when are we on vacation? When are they on vacation? We only have so much money for camps, so I don't want to do back-to-back camps. So we separate them out. Okay, then I have to go get on the waiting list and fill out all the forms. Then we have to pay the deposit. Then I have to know, like, you have to figure out what it is you do. And then you say, okay, I have done summer camp for the last five years. It would really help me if this year we did summer camp together. And then going forward, you're always going to schedule summer's camp. You can't just say your spouse, figure out summer camp for the kids. They're like, I don't know. That'd be like hiring someone and say, take over marketing tomorrow. Like, I don't even, okay, do you have colors? Like support, like support your partner in the way that you would support someone in business to take the cognitive load off. And there is a time frame there, but then that task is permanently moved to that new person, just like in business.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

All right. So I know a lot of business owners going back to your first days of business, uh, a lot of our listeners are still employed somewhere. They want to start a business. So how can we help them get organized before they do? In other words, I see a lot of business owners come to us. I'm like, well, we got to untangle a lot of stuff first because you created this or you allowed it to happen. What are some tips, insights that you can give to those that haven't quite pulled the plug yet to start their business so that they don't end up in that chaos at home and business?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah. So my I I just uh quit my job on the day before winter break and I was a teacher. So January 1, I was like, hi, I'm in business. Um, wouldn't recommend it, but I needed to quit my job and then I needed to make an income. So what I did was I started the company Organize 365. And by started the company, I mean I named it Organize 365 and registered the URL. That's all I did. And I was like, okay, well, I know that blogging is a thing. This is 2004, uh, 2012. I will blog and I will join another direct sales company, which I did. They don't exist anymore. It was called Clever Container. And I will, that's how I'll make money is I'll sell direct sales and then I will build this blog and I'll get brand deals. Like I live in Cincinnati, so Procter and Gamble, Kroger, like they'll pay me to blog. They never did. Anyways, people around me did, but not me. Like I thought that's how I would monetize it. So the first thing I would say is you have to get started and you can get started really small, just get the URL. Um, until you get started, you don't know how you're gonna monetize it. So about 90 days in, I was doing one of these direct sales parties and there were 25 people there. And if you've ever been to like a Mary Kay Tupperware type home party, there's never 25 people there. There's like four, six, eight, like they're not big. 25 people. So I said to my friend Maria, I was like, who are all these people and why are they here? And she's like, well, everyone wants to know what a professional organizer has to say. And I was like, oh, I'm a professional. I didn't know that's what it was. I'd been charging people to organize their house, but I didn't know that's what I was doing. I didn't know that was my profession. So the first thing I would say is, number one, you don't necessarily know what your uniqueness is and how you're gonna monetize it until you start getting out there and talking to people. And then you have to clarify your vision in your head and make it reality. And then people will start giving you feedback and you'll find what your uniqueness is. And you'll make a lot of pivots throughout your business. So you just have to get smart started in some way. The second thing I would say to that is in that first year in business, I was in business, but I even said to my husband, like, I know I need to make money and I will. However, I need to get this house under control as well. And so my book, Organization is a Learnable Skill, is that year I turned 40 that I started the company and all of the changes I made in my household during that year, it was really a shedding of being a stay-at-home mom of little kids. My kids were in middle school and high school, changing their bedrooms, changing the things we had in our house, getting rid of 40% of everything that we had, and really leveling up to what I was going to become as a business owner, changing my mindset. I literally changed my whole wardrobe through resale shops because nothing in my closet fit. Literally nothing fit. And so it was this really rebirth of myself into this new business owner before there really was a business that I was, I mean, I was the owner, but it wasn't making any money. Um, and that changing of your environment and processing through your closet and all those spaces, I find that kinesthetic work allows you to really envision and become who you are becoming in reality. Your household is supporting that. And then my first hire at the end of that year was someone to clean the house that I had finally organized so that I had more time to put into my business. For women, especially, you can't get out of the housework, period. So if you can outsource some of it, I used business money for a cleaning service so that I could have more hours in the business before I hired people in the business. And I think that's unique to women over men. Men can hire different people in the business first, uh, but women really need to hire household support first to free up more of their time and cognitive capacity.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Why and you may not have an answer to this. Why do you feel that women do take over that role of CEO in their house?

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Um, I think they always have from cave woman days. Like I mean, all the way back to cave woman days. I mean, like, this is like saying, like, why do women have babies? Like, like it right. It is just uh women have a natural skill set for being able to do a lot of things at one time. Like you can cook and know that the laundry needs to be changed, and remember the dog is coming in while you're answering a child's question about homework. Like, women can do that. Men cannot do that. Right. They just cannot do that. They are more linearly focused. And because we have this unique skill set and uh we're oriented this way, we just kind of naturally know what needs to be done. Like, this is what I'm getting my PhD in, and I've I've read thousands and thousands of studies, and it's undisputed that women do more work at home than men. Now, that's that's that gap is narrowing. Men are doing more and women are doing less. Uh, but women are just naturally inclined to being able to manage a lot more invisible chaos and to know, like as a teacher, I would know where all my students were, what all the different levels they were at, and I would also know what was going on in the building. Like, we just have that natural environment in our household. And cognitively, as women take over and nest and create their houses in their 20s, the household management becomes more complex in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. And as we do skills over and over and over again, We encode those skills deeper into our brain. They move remove from our working memory and they go into cognitive schemas. So we don't even know what we do anymore. We just naturally do it. And that's an expert in any area. Any expert in any area has done something so long they don't even remember how they learn to do it or how they do it. And most women are that way in the household. However, in your late 30s and 40s, you hit cognitive overload. Now you don't remember how you did or why you did. You just always do it. And now you don't have enough time to do it all and you don't know how to tell anybody else how to help you. So we're naturally good at it, but we all usually hit that overload sometime in our 40s. And it's not pretty. And it's also usually when we decide to start a business. So you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah. Like, let's just add one more thing. That'll work. That'll solve it.

unknown 22:46

Yeah, right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

I watched a speaker one time. He was talking about uh female and male and how they think. And he's like, the the cylinders are always firing in the female, and then the males think of a bunch of rooms. It's like, okay, we watch sports. And I move this one room to the front of my head. I watch sports. I move it back. I'm gonna read the paper. I move it, you know.

unknown 23:06

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Or like the box of crayons, you've got the Crayola 8 or the full 64 spectrum, you know. Yeah, we just we are different, men and women are different. We just have different skill sets and yeah.

Books That Teach Household Management

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah. So on your business, so you've written six books, or this is the sixth book, I believe. So how have those progressed? Is it a series of books? Is it kind of like I learned this, so I want to share that now? I I can that was the foundation. I want to add to it. How how do those books work? Is it something that would be beneficial for them to read each one first, or is it just kind of in general?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

So they're all separate. So the uniqueness and the complexity of my business is that people have obviously done professional organization before and taught you how to organize your soccer and all of those kinds of things. Organize 365 is a little different in that I'm a school teacher and so I'm teaching the skill of organization. And there is so much to learn in running and managing a household. There aren't a lot of people, I'm trying to think of anybody else who teaches you how to manage a household. So I've kind of created an industry and I was a teacher. So blogging or podcasting is not a big deal to me because it's like a lesson plan. You create a lesson plan, you teach the lesson. Create a lesson plan, teach the lesson. And once I've taught enough podcasts or enough lessons or enough courses, I'm like, oh, this would be a book. So the one book, um, The Mindset of Organization talks about how different generations view stuff differently in their household and how to talk cross-generationally. Another one, how ADHD affects home organization, takes my teacher training and my understanding of the cognitive of how we function in schools and how we support people with ADHD in schools. How would I support you in your household with ADHD? What structures would I put in place for that? Organization is a learnable skill, is my like memoir of that year that I actually took back my house. And this new book, Escaping Quicksand, is the mental mindset shifts I made in the 40s. And then I have a book called The Paper Solution, which organizes all the paper information management in your household into binders.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

I could see how this would be beneficial for companies to offer to their employees. So what would it look like to work with you? Because if I'm working with a bunch of people, well, unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people are single moms with kids and they're trying to manage all these different things. But if I was to offer something like this to my employees, like, hey, let's help you get some, you know, organizational things so that your life is easier. What does it look like to work with you?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Absolutely. It is 100% a wellness play. We used to have a product where we organized your work. Um, and I, because I can work coach and all of that. And I found it was distracting from the home piece. And the employees who were who got purchased the work stuff, they wanted the home piece. They wanted the Sunday basket to organize their kitchen counter, which is the easiest thing. It's less than$200, or the whole entire curriculum that I have that'll organize the entire house and paper and everything is$3,000 and it'll do everything, and everything's a lifetime membership. You get physical products when you sign up for each of my classes, a course, and then an ongoing co-working time, and you're just in that group for a lifetime. It's so much fun. It's like adult school.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Well, and it's something different. It's not there's not a thousand courses out there like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

It doesn't sound like that I've no, not to tackle all of these different areas from a productivity lens. And I want to free up your time. So all of these are an investment. Like we talked about how you would have to think about what your invisible work is in order to onboard somebody into your business. You have to do that for yourself. Okay, why do I do what I do? Do I need to vacuum the house every day? No, you do not. Like, oh my gosh, I never thought about eating on paper plates when I'm a CPA during tax season. You know what I mean? Like there are seasons where you just don't have enough time, but you don't think about doing things differently in your household because you've just always done them this way. And nobody on Instagram is sharing that. What they're sharing is even more perfect looking houses than you have and making you feel bad. So, how do we lower our load, not add more complexity to being a perfect homemaker? I want to give you more time to do what you're uniquely gifted and created to do, like start your business instead of make your house look even more perfect for the people who aren't coming to see it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Right. That's that's probably my problem. I'm I'm one of those. I'm like, everything has its place. We have to no, no one's coming over for the next two weeks. Right. But it's just the mental aspect. Well, let's talk about the mental side because it is mindset. How where would you even start with helping someone understand their mindset? Because that can be complicated in itself.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah. So I think I think there's the personal mindset and then the mindset of the household CEO. So the mindset of the household CEO is this is a job, even if I'm not paid to do it, it has an economic impact. So the time is worth money. I think at home we think like, well, you know, this is free, or I'll do it without hiring somebody. So now it's free because I'm using my time. Your time is not free. Your time is not free, period. Your time has a value. So really thinking that, and and if you want to use your time to read a book, that's great. How can you get your work done so that you can read more pages in a book and really valuing your time as paid time, even if you're not being paid for it? And then starting to look at your household as a business. Like, if a business consultant was coming into my household and looking at how I spent my time, we'd be like, okay, I think we could get the dishes done a little bit quicker. I don't think we have to fold the underwear that nicely for the three-year-old. Maybe just throw it in the drawer. They're going to pull it out anyway. Like, where are the efficiencies that they would immediately say, oh, don't do that. That's not efficient in running your business. And then secondly, there is the personal mindset, especially of women who have been running the household. We learn how to run households and we run them and we have a lot of pride in running our households well, uh, in providing for our family well in the household, in in caring for the people in our household. And we take a lot of pride in that. And we feel that if we don't do it to the level we've always done it, then we're not giving our family what they need. And what I want to say is they don't realize the level with your what you're giving it anyway. So drop it by 20%, 40%, drop it until they notice and then go up 5%. That's number one. But number two, along the way, we start to prioritize the household and the people in the household and what it all looks like over our own care. And our own care is not a bubble bath and a massage and getting your nails done, although I love all of those things. It is like your nutrition, your wellness, your activities, your educational advancement. You give those things to your spouse, your parents, your kids willingly. Oh, yeah, we have the money for that. But if you want to do something for you, you're like, oh, I wonder if I can DIY it. How much time is that gonna take you? And so we don't prioritize, you know, the nutrition that we would give to our family members to ourselves. Really thinking about yourself as an equal person in your household. When you're filling everybody else's water bottle, are you filling yours? When you're thinking of all the food allergies and everything when you make your foods, are you thinking about what your nutritional needs are for food? Like I'm past menopause, so I can't eat as many carbs as you know, the grandchild that lives with me. I need to make a different dinner for me, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Let's talk about your podcast because it's got millions of downloads. You've got, I believe, over 700 episodes. How can that help somebody?

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Those are the numbered ones. There's over a thousand. So I've I've been solo podcasting for 11 years on the Organized 365 podcast. All these random thoughts that I have at 3 a.m. that I've shared with you on this podcast, I flesh those out and talk about them even more on the Organized 365 podcast. For six years, we also did a Wednesday podcast where I interviewed somebody going through their transformational journey through the Organized 365 products as well. And I really, a lot of people will say I give voice to the things that women are thinking in their head that they never knew how to even articulate. And they, and they're like, oh, well, once you mention it, yes, I was thinking that way. And then when they think about it, and I say, you know, like just use paper plates during tax season. If you're a CPA, they go, Why didn't I think of that? So it's a lot of that very odd, everything I say is like very obvious. You probably have thought it yourself, but you didn't say it out loud and you don't know who to talk to about it. So talk to me about it.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah. You mentioned transformation. What is the transformation that people that you've seen through people? Because some people, some people we don't recognize, we just think, oh, we did this and that, and that must be normal or not normal. And but from the outside, I'm sure you see like a complete transformation.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So the transformation that people think they will get from getting organized is that their house will look pretty and they will know where everything goes. And you absolutely get that. But the true transformation is you go from judgment and perfectionistic mindset to giving yourself grace and being a person of excellence, unlocking your time because once your house is organized, you have a lot more time. And then you have to wrestle with what you're uniquely gifted and created to do with that time because you can't organize your house anymore because it's already organized. So people at the end are like, oh, this is great, but I'm not so happy with you, Lisa, because I don't know what I want to do. Most people don't know what they want to do with more time. Your audience does know what they want to do with more time. They just can't find the time. Organization is a current investment of time for a future exponential return on time. So you can do things without getting organized. It's just gonna feel harder. But if you actually get organized first, everything goes so much faster.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

That's interesting you say that because one of the most common questions business owners ask me whenever I say, you know, our ultimate goal is to get your business working without you. And they often follow up with, Well, what am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 33:04

What am I gonna do? Get a PhD, you guys. It's fun.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

You make money and you do whatever you want. You have freedom, you have your freedom back and your peace and all that good stuff. Well, this has been an interesting topic. We have not had anyone talking about organization, so I know it's gonna be very beneficial to a lot of people. How can someone learn more about this? Websites, the name of the podcast, books, courses, all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yep, everything's organized 365. So come on over to the Organize 365 podcast. The website is organize365.com. All the courses and products are there, and I'm Organize 365 on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Fantastic. Are you on LinkedIn by chance?

SPEAKER_00 33:46

I am Lisa Woodruff on LinkedIn. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Fantastic. Well, we usually ended the show with if there was a group of business owners, different sizes, different industries, what is one piece of advice you would give that's applicable to all of them? It could be just a quote, it could be a book, it could be just one last insight.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I think I think the reason I've been able to do everything that I've been able to do is because I always dream bigger. Like as soon as you accomplish a goal, you need to think about what is the next one. So if you were able to start your business, or if your business were to double or 10x in the next five years, what would it look like? And then dream about that. Like think about that as you're going to bed, and it's amazing. In the morning, you'll be like, Oh, I need to do this in order to move forward towards that goal. So keep dreaming. Get out of the weeds and start dreaming, and then the weeds are easier to walk through.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Right. With a plan, as you said. Yes. Yes. With a plan.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

I'm all about the planning.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah, I love plans. Make a plan, follow the plan. That's that's the key to it. So, Lisa, you've been wonderful, blessing to many. I wish you continued success.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

Sponsor Message And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 35:03

My pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, Boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at business ownership simplified.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at Michael at michaeldemorson.com. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.